New Call of Duty Game Will Cut Down Bandwidth-Busting Download Size [CNET]

Call of Duty: Warzone will be its own download, separating it from the main game and freeing up your hard-drive space.

You may want to hold off on that hard drive upgrade if you thought you’d be needing more space to store October’s release of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6. Activision announced in a blog post Thursday that this year’s edition of the popular shooter franchise will be a much smaller download, among other changes ahead of the Oct. 25 launch date.

The biggest change, especially for gamers who dread a gigantic download, is that Call of Duty: Warzone, a battle royale game that has been bundled with the main game, is being separated into its own download. Players of the free-to-play game can still access the game, but it won’t be part of the download for Black Ops 6, which could save you as much as 130GB of hard drive space.

Other changes for this year’s edition include a revamped user interface and a new system that will stream some game graphics textures as needed, instead of forcing you to download them all ahead of time. 

How big is the Call of Duty: Blacks Ops 6 file size?

While we won’t know for certain until October, Activision has confirmed it will be much smaller than 300GB.

Changes ahead of Black Ops 6 will also introduce a revamped file organization system. The upshot for players is that on the PlayStation 5, updates will be broken up into four parts. Activision says that other platforms, including Xbox and PC, will have their Call of Duty experience updated as a single download.

An early access beta test of the new game will begin on Aug. 30 and go through Sept. 4, and an open beta will be held from Sept. 6 to Sept. 9.